Gmail Developers Read Your Email, Bodhi Linux Media Is a New Distro for Artists, Mozilla’s July Featured Extensions and More

The
Wall Street Journal reported yesterday that Gmail allows data
companies and developers to see users' email and private details, and read entire messages. According to a related story on The
Verge, while some email apps "do need to receive user consent, the consent
form isn't exactly clear that it would allow humans—and not just
computers—to read your emails." In addition, Google told The
Verge that it gives data only to "vetted third-party developers and with
users' explicit consent" and also that Google employees may read your email,
but only in "very specific cases where you ask us to and give consent, or
where we need to for security purposes, such as investigating a bug or
abuse".

There's a new distro called Bodhi Linux
Media, derived from Bodhi Linux, "a lightweight, Ubuntu-based
distro that includes only a browser, a terminal emulator, and a few other
system tools". For Bodhi Linux Media, creator Giuseppe Torre customized the
desktop interface, "capitalizing on the fact that the operating system is
fast and lean (with no random stuff running in the background)" and curated
the software specifically for artists in many different digital art fields.
The software includes Adobe alternatives (GIMP, Inkscape, Natron, Scribus and
Synfig Studio), Ardour, Arduino IDE, Atom, Audacity, Blender, Firefox, Krita,
LibreOffice, MuseScore, Open Broadcaster, Processing, Pure Data,
SuperCollider and VLC. See Giuseppe's article on opensource.com
for more details.

In other Mozilla news, Mozilla yesterday endorsed the Brazilian Data
Protection Bill (PLC 53/2018). In summary, "The lack of a comprehensive
data protection law exposes Brazilian citizens to risks of misuse of their
personal data by both government and private services. This is a timely and
historic moment where Brazil has the opportunity to finally pass a baseline
data protection law that will safeguard the rights of Brazilians for
generations to come."

The Association for Computing Machinery's US Technology Policy
Committee (USACM) yesterday made "detailed recommendations to Congress for
protecting personal privacy in the wake of the Facebook/Cambridge Analytica
controversy". View the USACM
statement to learn about its nine goals for personal privacy protection
legislation. The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) is "the world's
largest and longest
-established
association of computing professionals representing approximately 50,000
individuals in the
United States and 100,000 worldwide".